Cost of Living Calculator | City and Salary Comparison Tool
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Compare the cost of living in 2 cities.
Current cityIf you can’t find a city, you can type the state name to see all cities available in that state.
New city
Pre-tax household income
Los Angeles-Long Beach
Comparable Income: $40,721
Miami-Dade County
Comparable Income: $32,025
Chicago
Comparable Income: $32,344
Boston
Comparable Income: $40,695
New York (Manhattan)
Comparable Income: $65,085
Philadelphia
Comparable Income: $28,367
Afford the city you want to live in
Get free guidance on changes you can make to afford more home, without spending more.
Where does the data come from?
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Core cost of living data is from The Cost of Living Index – COLI from the Council for Community and Economic Research, or C2ER. Researchers conducted price collection in each city at a specified time and followed specific standards.
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Education data was provided courtesy of Greatschools, a nationwide ratings system that evaluates schools based on performance on state achievement tests, graduation rates and other factors.
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NerdWallet’s calculator doesn’t include tax data, which can vary by and within metropolitan areas.
How is this tool different from other resources out there?
If you want more information about one of the cities you’ve compared, you can use NerdWallet’s City Life tool for data on local schools and businesses, walkability and demographics — more than basic cost comparisons. You can see Manhattan’s page here. Input the city name and state abbreviation for other locations to see their information.
What is ‘cost of living’?
One of most important determinations you need to make before moving to a new city or town is how much it will cost to live there. “Cost of living” is the amount of money you need to sustain a certain lifestyle in a given place.
Because the price of goods and services varies from one city to the next, calculating the cost of living will determine how affordable it is to live in a certain area.
The expenses that factor into cost of living can include housing affordability, transportation expenses, food prices and entertainment costs. Cost of living is also tied to income, as salary levels in a geographic area are measured against these expenses.
What is the breakdown of the cost of living?
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Housing costs: According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the largest bill consumers pay each month is for housing. Whether that’s a mortgage or rent, a large percentage of your salary will go toward your housing expenses. Home prices, property taxes and monthly rents vary from state to state, city to city, town to town and even neighborhood to neighborhood. For homeowners, there are more expenses to consider than just the monthly mortgage payment. There are also maintenance costs, upgrades, taxes and fees to take into account when deciding where to live.
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Transportation: Unless you’re lucky enough to work from home, you will need to factor in transportation costs when deciding where to live.
According to the BLS, transportation is the second-largest expense consumers have. For some, these costs include taking public transportation. For others, it involves driving your car, and that means factoring in car repairs, gas, tolls and parking. Proximity to employment is an important consideration because it can drastically impact your cost of living. -
Food: Weekly trips to the grocery store can add up, especially if food costs are high where you live. According to the latest BLS data, consumers average over $8,000 per year on food expenses. There are ways to trim that down. You could eat out less, cut back on takeout and cook more often. But even then, the price of groceries is going to significantly influence your cost of living.
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Entertainment: A movie ticket, a pint of beer, box seats at a baseball game — they can all come with a different price tag depending upon where you live. And it adds up. Americans spend an average of more than $3,500 per year on entertainment.
But just like with food costs, you can curb how much you spend on entertainment by altering your behavior. -
Healthcare costs: On average, Americans spend almost $5,500 per year on healthcare costs. For most people, the bulk of these costs are made up by insurance premiums, but if you’re uninsured — or are considering an area with few in-network providers — healthcare costs may play a role in where you decide to live.
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Education: Some of the metro areas covered by this calculator also include a GreatSchools score, which gives public schools a 1-10 rating. If you’re moving to an area with excellent public schools, your education costs may remain low — most Americans pay about $1,200 per year — but if you decide you’d prefer private schools for your child, this may also factor into your cost of living.
According to the BLS, transportation is the second-largest expense consumers have. For some, these costs include taking public transportation. For others, it involves driving your car, and that means factoring in car repairs, gas, tolls and parking. Proximity to employment is an important consideration because it can drastically impact your cost of living.
But just like with food costs, you can curb how much you spend on entertainment by altering your behavior.What is a cost of living index?
A cost of living index allows you to directly compare what it costs to live in one area against another, helping you understand how far your money can go in each place.
For example, the cost of living in San Francisco is twice that of Twin Falls, Idaho. Whether you use a cost of living index or a cost of living calculator, each will help you feel more confident in deciding where to live.
About the calculator
NerdWallet’s cost of living calculator is powered by data from C2ER. According to the council, its cost of living index “is the only local level cost of living index available for the U.S.” It adds that, “Items on which the Index is based have been carefully chosen to reflect the different categories of consumer expenditures.”
C2ER was founded in 1961, and it continues to exist today as a nonprofit organization. It has published its quarterly Cost of Living Index since 1968. It is comprised of data about “over 60 goods and services collected at the local level from over 300 independent researchers.”
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Review of All Things Must Pass, Colin Hanks’ Tower Records Documentary
All Things Must Pass plays SF DocFest this Thursday. It has been acquired by Gravitas Ventures who have plans for a September release.
Having spent a good portion the 90s dusting punk records in the indie section of Tower Records on Blackstone and Bullard in Fresno with my own dandruff, I’m an especially receptive audience for All Things Must Pass, Colin Hanks’ new documentary on the rise and fall of Tower Records. For damn near anyone who grew up in California between 1970 and 2000, Tower Records was the hang out spot, a place we all somehow thought of as ours, even if it was just as much our parents’.
Growing up with an institution like that, it’s hard not to feel a deep sadness when you drive past a shuttered Tower, even if you’re not a person typically given to nostalgia over commerce, or disposed towards Sorkin-esque lectures about why mp3’s can never be as “real” as vinyl.
All of which is to say that yes, Tower Records deserves to have its history told, and Colin Hanks has chosen a great subject for a documentary.
Hanks mixes stock footage and photographs, along with interviews with the principals – from Tower founder Russ Solomon to original clerks and warehouse managers – and cameos by big-name Tower fans like Elton John and Bruce Springsteen. It documents the rise and fall of Tower, and by extension, of record collecting in America. It’s a beautifully nostalgic slice of life and a compelling window into a particular subculture, with all the incredible beehives, leisure suits, and mustaches you can imagine that might entail (were women ever sexier than in the seventies? I say no). There’s a segment on Tower’s original straitlaced-yet-lecherous accountant, who gets called a pervert at his own tearful memorial, and scans of original internal Tower Records receipts for “hand truck fuel,” aka OG Tower employee slang for cocaine, which they dutifully charged to their expense accounts (must be nice).
A colorful cast of characters is a must for any compelling documentary, and All Things Must Pass certainly has that, but it eventually gets bogged down in the dull and somewhat esoteric business of internal company politics. To adapt a dad proverb, office politics are sort of like assholes. As a result All Things Must pass ends up leaning too heavily on the “what” of Tower Records while offering too little of the “why.” The company’s expansions and corporate restructurings aren’t nearly as interesting as the social forces that spawned Tower Records. As Tower founder Russ Solomon himself says in the closing moments of the film, “we were a part of people’s lives, because music was.”
Right, because the music was. For me, that’s the rub. Why was record collecting such a huge part of everyone’s lives, a key component of adolescent identity, and how did that all but disappear in five years or so? All Things Must Pass does tell some of that story, and its interviews with people like Elton John and Dave Grohl about what Tower Records meant for them are some of the best parts.
But knowing the specifics of Tower’s balance sheets from 1986 or who got put in charge of the Great Lakes expansion doesn’t help me understand what Tower was and what it meant to people. Not every secret you have access to needs to be told, even if that might be easier than trying to understand the greater sociological forces at play here.
I hope Colin Hanks and Gravitas Ventures keep chiseling away at All Things Must Pass before the official release. There’s a beautiful baby in there, it just needs a nurse to come in and clean the turds and amniotic fluid off of it.
GRADE: B-
Vince Mancini is a writer and comedian living in San Francisco, about six blocks from Tower Records’ original flagship store, which is now an empty shell next to a Walgreen’s. A graduate of Columbia’s non-fiction MFA program, his work has appeared on FilmDrunk, the UPROXX network, the Portland Mercury, the East Bay Express, and all over his mom’s refrigerator. Fan FilmDrunk on Facebook, find the latest movie reviews here.
Topics: #Filmdrunk Reviews, #Uproxx Movie Reviews, #ReviewsTags: All Things Must Pass, COLIN HANKS, Documentary, FILMDRUNK REVIEWS, movie reviews, reviews, RUSS SOLOMON, SF DOC FEST, Tower Records
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The whole area is now monitoring the construction at Novaya Botanika
12.2018″> 12/13/2018
Novaya Botanika has become one of the flagship residential development projects in New Yekaterinburg. For a year, at some incredible pace, the Riviera Invest Yekaterinburg Group of Companies managed to build and inhabit a two-section high-rise building on the street. Krestinsky, 2 and practically complete the box of the second high-rise building.
It would seem that this is already enough to impress, earn a reputation and convince the buyer of their own strength and viability. However, the developer went further and in November started building another house – an “amethyst” tower, which will become not only a continuation of the jewelry quarter, but also a kind of “beacon” for the entire microdistrict. The work began six months ahead of schedule: the rush demand for apartments forced the developer to reconsider the originally announced deadlines for the implementation of this project.
Sales of apartments in the “amethyst” tower is about to open.
Yekaterinburg residents are already leaving preliminary applications in order to speed up the deal after the official start of sales. The format of this house is an indisputable know-how for traditional Botany.
Builders are knitting rebar and pouring slabs on the first floor of the “amethyst” house
This is how the New Botanica towers will look like by the end of construction
Ten floors up
Instead of the usual 12-18 floors for Botanica, the new house will have 25 floors, and it will not go unnoticed by residents of neighboring areas.
Apartments on the high floors of the “amethyst” tower (and after it the “ruby” tower – the next stage of construction) will receive an additional advantage: the Uktus mountains will be clearly visible from their windows, a wide perspective will open up on the center of Yekaterinburg, the southern quarters and the green massif of the South-East West.
If you choose a higher floor, you can enjoy the panorama of your hometown every day!
Jewelery entrance
The decoration of the entrance halls will continue the general jewelry concept of the quarter, set in the first houses of New Botany. The stone of the III stage of construction is an amethyst. Elements of internal navigation of the house and individual wall fragments will be painted in the colors of this mineral.
A small sofa area will allow you to spend time comfortably while waiting for a taxi. Here you can also receive a courier
Smart home for a smart city
The idea to make Yekaterinburg a smart city, which was actively discussed at Innoprom-2018, was linked to Expo-2025. And, although the exhibition will be hosted by the Japanese, the Ural capital will still develop towards the development of progressive solutions. A smart city starts with a smart home and smart technologies that allow you to save resources and control their consumption.
It is this position that the developer of “New Botanica” adheres to.
Residents of the “amethyst” tower will be able to regulate the consumption of water, heating and electricity in their apartment. The house will have horizontal wiring of engineering networks, electric meters and water meters, air infiltration valves (ventilation with closed windows), as well as heating radiators with thermostats. Together with Rostelecom, the developer will extend a fiber optic cable to each floor to provide residents with high-quality high-speed Internet – today this resource is no less significant.
Apartments with rational layouts
The absolute difference between the new “amethyst” tower and the houses that already exist in Botanica is apartments. When developing the layouts, the developer took into account the experience of building the Beloretsky residential complex and Das Haus at the Bus Station and the specifics of the apartment assortment of Botanica itself. Therefore, the solutions turned out to be convenient, modern and, in general, unique for this area.
Along with the classic studios, Phase III of Novaya Botanika will feature studios with two windows — it is easier to zone them without compromising on space. This is a good option for those who buy their first apartment, but savings for a more spacious odnushka is not enough yet.
Amethyst tower studio layouts
Among one-room apartments in Novaya Botanika today, classic variants with a small kitchen and a bedroom and European layouts with a room of 12–14 meters and a kitchen-living room are equally in demand. Each of them necessarily provides a spacious corridor, where a wardrobe can easily fit in – the space of the living room will be spared from unnecessary things.
Examples of layouts of one-room apartments in the “amethyst” house
The apartments will be handed over to buyers with a finished fine finish: you can save on repairs and move to a new house immediately after receiving the keys.
The commissioning of the “amethyst” tower is scheduled for 2020, but the developer promises to complete the construction of the third house in the fourth quarter of 2019, and judging by the fact that he has already kept his promises about the first two high-rise buildings, it will be so.
A sample of fine finishes in the handed over “emerald” house of “New Botany”
The family format in the “amethyst” house is represented by several solutions for two- and three-room apartments. You can choose the option with windows on one or two sides of the world, with windows to the courtyard or the outer perimeter of the block. Of course, you will not find gigantic rooms here, but the size of the bedrooms is enough to equip any interior in them.
Layouts of two- and three-room apartments in Phase III of Novaya Botanika
New infrastructure
The first floors of all three buildings will be occupied by commercial services
In the near future, the Verny supermarket and the multidisciplinary clinic Health 365 will open at Novaya Botanika.
Near the “amethyst” tower there will be a passage to the territory of the complex only for the residents of “New Botanica”. Playgrounds, sports zones and recreation will be organized in the yard.
This is how the courtyard of the first house of the “jewelry” block 9 looks like0112
An office of the Riviera Invest Yekaterinburg Group of Companies operates near the construction site
Sales of apartments in the “amethyst” tower are not yet open, but applications for advance booking can be left at the developer’s office. Here you can apply for a mortgage in several banks and get advice about the object from specialists.
Address: Yekaterinburg, st. March 8, 197,
New Botanica sales office
Opening hours: Mon-Fri: from 10:00 to 19:00
Sat: from 11:00 to 18:00
Sun: closed
Phone: +7 (343) 273 -63- 63
* Sales of apartments in phase III are not open yet.